Blueprint’s “Word Is Blog” Book Celebrates Eyedea Amid 14th Anniversary Of His Death

Blueprint has written a new book called Word is Blog: Volume One, 2010-2011, a collection of his blog posts that includes musings on his friendship with the late Rhymesayers MC Eyedea.

The beloved wordsmith died in 2010 at the age of 28 after suffering a drug overdose. According to the Ramsey County Medical Examiner’s Office, he succumbed to respiratory depression caused by opiate derivatives, although the specific drug was never disclosed to the public.

Eyedea’s death hit the underground Hip-Hop community hard and even 14 years later, his absence can still be felt. On Wednesday (October 16), the anniversary of Eyedea’s passing, social media blew up with tributes. Rhymesayers co-founder Sean “Slug” Daley wrote simply, “miss u mikey,” while his longtime collaborator and friend DJ Abilities wrote, “R.EYE.P.”

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Blueprint dedicates a portion of Word is Blog to remembering Eyedea. He shared a snippet of it in a recent Instagram post. It read: “During this time, we would see each other in other Midwest cities and always kick it. That’s when Eyedea and I realized we had the same kind of trouble-making instinct. It wasn’t trouble-making in terms of being destructive or disrespecting people, or even drinking or doing drugs, because neither of us did any of that at the time. Our thing was battling. We loved to find whoever thought they were the best and serve those fools. No matter what city we were in, before or after we played, we were probably in the biggest freestyle cipher we could find, letting cats know what it was.

“Later that year we were all at the Rocksteady anniversary in New York. Greenhouse & Illogic were in town doing some recording with our friends The Atoms Family. I didn’t even know Eyedea was there at first (this was before having a cell phone was normal), but once I saw him at the jam we were out!”

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Blueprint dives into plenty of other topics, including his own journey to sobriety.

“The inspiration behind this book was to start cataloging all the writings that I had been doing on my blog for the people who may not have seen them when they were initially published,” he tells AllHipHop. “This was particularly important to me due to some of the topics I was writing about at the time like getting sober, Eyedea’s passing and suicide. The book also has some chapters where the writing is more humorous and light-hearted so that it’s a very balanced read overall.”

Copies are currently available on Blueprint’s Weightless Recordings website. His next album, Chamber Music II, arrives on November 5.